


i wanna be the one that makes your day

by katsuhira (articheart)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Birthday Fluff, F/M, Friendship, happy late birthday!, imagine being mark lee's best friend, somewhat of a crackfic, this is a gift for mabel, this is it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23388583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/articheart/pseuds/katsuhira
Summary: Mark and Mabel are best friends who attend university together.These are the tales of three times they made each other laugh, plus one time they made each other cry (but still laughed it out afterwards).
Relationships: Mark Lee (NCT) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	i wanna be the one that makes your day

_“I look_

_at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world_

_except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally, and anyway it’s in the Frick_

_which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet_

_so we can go together for the first time”_

(Frank O’Hara, “Having A Coke With You”)

  
  
  


_—_

_1_

Mark is seconds away from falling asleep with his head tucked over his crossed arms when a drink is placed down on the table, inches from his face. He feels the frost before he actually sees it, only managing to force his eyes open half a beat later. Groaning, he rolls his shoulders back and stretches his arms out before taking the first sip from his iced coffee.

“You know, you could’ve just said you were too tired to come out today. I would’ve let you sleep for longer,” Mabel chirps from the chair across from him as she stirs her own drink with a paper straw.

“Noooo,” says Mark. He goes to rub his eyes but his brain fails to register the fact he’s wearing glasses so he just ends up poking the lens, “Fuck. No, I mean, I wanted to come,” 

Mabel laughs. “Still. We could’ve just met at the dorms instead of coming all the way here,” 

Mark hums with a pout and shakes his half-empty cup, “Yeah. You make better coffee, anyway,”

“Wanna go back?” Mabel shrugs with a smile, which instantly gets a smile out of Mark, too, “I’ll let you nap on my bed,” 

At the words, his smile grows even wider, eyes widening. “Dude, I _love_ your bed!”

“Yeah, even though yours is exactly the same,” Mabel replies with a chuckle and in no time they’re out the café’s door, paper cups clutched tightly in hand. Mark squints a little at the brightness of the early morning hours, running his free hand through his dark hair.

“No way.” he insists, “Mine’s okay but yours is soft and perfect _,”_

“See? This is why I won’t give you the keys to my room. You’d steal my bed from me every night,” 

“Not every night,” Mark shakes his head, seemingly much more awake after downing the remains of his drink and tossing it into a trashcan. “A few times a week, maybe,”

“Of course,” she says solemnly with a nod.

They walk quietly for a little while, basking in the slight breeze until both of them try to break the silence at the same time, words jumbling together. They stop mid-sentence simultaneously, meeting eyes and barking out twin laughs. 

“Go,” says Mark with a wheeze.

“No, you go first,” Mabel concedes with a gesture and a side smile.

“Fine,” he nods happily, “I was just gonna suggest we pass by the sciences building first. I wanted to ask about an elective I’m trying to apply for.”

“That’s so far, though,” Mabel hums, “Aren’t you tired? That’s a lot of effort for a Saturday morning,”

Mark freezes in the middle of the sidewalk, voice going up an octave, “Wait, _what?”_

“What?” Mabel widens her eyes slightly as Mark throws his head back in laughter.

“Today’s a _Saturday?”_

_“_ Yeah? What did you think it was?” Mabel asks, barely containing another smile. 

“Oh my God. Today just got so much better,” He says, shaking his head but his voice cracks tragically at the very last word and that’s what does it for them, sending them both into a long laughing fit. Mark’s squeaky giggles just add fuel to the fire, to the point the people on the other side of the street start to stare. When they catch their breaths, at last, Mark red-faced and Mabel trying to soothe the ache on her cheeks from smiling too hard, Mark tuts:

“Yo, what were you saying?”

“Huh?” she raises her eyebrows then shakes her head with a chuckle, “Oh, nevermind. I forgot,” 

  
  
  


_2_

  
  
  


They have both been staring up at the fan for a while now. It’s a warm day and the air is sultry, leaving them no choice but to be exactly as they are now, laying on the carpeted ground of Mark’s dorm room — Mark sitting cross-legged with his laptop on his lap and Mabel right beside him, laying on a throw pillow, — waiting for puffs of air from the decaying asset above them. Not that it’s helping much. 

From Mark’s tiny bluetooth speaker come the first chords of Frank Ocean’s _Forrest Gump_ and he immediately starts to hum along.

_“I wanna see your pom-poms from the stands,”_ Mark sings quietly as he scrolls down his Twitter feed. Mabel nudges his leg softly with her shoulder and sings along, eyes glued to her own phone, _“Come on, come on,”_

Mabel rolls over to lay on her stomach, swinging her feet to the beat while Mark types away at his computer, only a couple hundred words into the paper for his Mass Media Law class and already bored out of his mind.

“I don’t wanna do this,” Mark whines dramatically, setting the computer aside and letting himself flop down to the floor, crossing his arms behind his head, “Forget majoring in journalism, I wanna write love songs and live like a hermit,” 

“Yeah, right,” Mabel replies without looking up from her screen, “You love being around people too much,”

“I’d go into isolation, like, just for the vibe,” he tuts and Mabel laughs brightly, caught off guard, and the way her eyes crinkle make Mark smile through the rest of his words, “I’m a writer! It’s what I _do.”_

“Okay,” she snickers with a shake of her head.

“No, listen!” Mark chirps and straightens up on a whim, eyes huge and shiny like marbles, “I’ll go into the woods and come back when I have a full album, like Hozier,” 

Mabel nods, still laughing, “And we’ll communicate through smoke signals, so you won’t be lonely,” 

“Yes! I’ll tame a pigeon so we can trade letters,” 

“You’ll _tame_ a pigeon?” Mabel downright cackles in disbelief and drops her phone, burying her face on the pillow.

“Even better, if I bring a flashlight with me, we can use Morse code like in Parasite,” his tone rises in excitement, “We could learn it right now!” 

Mabel rolls to the side to face away from him and stabs an arm back, as if to fend him off. “Stop,” she struggles to say in between intakes of breath, body still shaking slightly with laughter, “I can’t breathe,” 

Mark chuckles and stretches his arm out to poke at her ribs, to which she half-shrieks and wiggles to move away from.

“I mean it,” Mark hums sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I know you do,” Mabel smiles at him and sits up, retrieving her phone from the spot it had been dropped on. She sighs, happily, and Mark offers her one last giggle before he begrudgingly goes back to his laptop and resumes writing.

  
  
  
  


_3_

  
  
  
  


“Come on, let me do yours,” says Mabel, brandishing a tube of nail polish. 

Mark fakes a sigh but the tug on the corner of his mouth gives it away. “Fine,” he says, sliding off Mabel’s bed to join her on the floor, “But do black, or like, blue. I wanna look cool,” 

Mabel just hums and grabs one of Mark’s hands, placing it on top of her own knee. She rummages through the bag beside her and comes up with a navy blue tube.

“Like this?” she asks, handing it to Mark so he can take a look for himself.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he hums, then crooks an eyebrow, looking mildly distressed, “Aren’t nail polish shades supposed to have super funky names, though? This one’s so boring. It’s just Midnight Blue,”

Mabel laughs at his disappointment and slides the bag towards him, while he hands her the blue tube back. “There’s more in there,” 

Nodding, Mark struggles with only one available hand to grab his phone and select a playlist he crafted himself, which is really just the entirety of DPR LIVE’s Coming To You Live album, sprinkled with Anne-Marie songs. He doesn’t have his speaker with him this time so he just lets the music play as it is, even if the audio comes out distorted and not all that clear unless the volume is set to the max. After he’s done, Mark occupies himself fumbling with the bag.

“Ha!” he laughs after a few seconds of exploring its contents, pulling out an electric yellow tube, “This one’s called Designated Driver,”

“I think that was gifted to me,” chimes Mabel, without ever diverting her attention from the task at hand.

“Oh, no,” he chuckles, turning the label of another one towards Mabel, “This one’s Jail Bait,” 

Mabel smiles brightly and shows him her own nails, painted a dark red, “That’s the one I have on right now,” 

Mark cackles so hard his eyes crinkles and he squirms in place until Mabel tells him to stop moving so much.

“Chihuahua Bites? With an exclamation point?” Mark moves swiftly to the next tube that has caught his eye, a rather unflattering shade of orange, “Who even names these. Some of them don’t even make sense,” 

Mabel laughs, “Imagine your job being naming shades of nail polish. You’re just in the office, writing shit down,” 

“At one point you just start saying whatever. It doesn’t even have to have anything to do with the color,” 

“Exactly,” she nods, “Or maybe the person who comes up with the shade is the one to name it, too. Like an arts project. You gotta name your own creation,” 

“You’re right…” Mark trails off before a gasp brings him right back, “—oh! That tickles,” 

“Other hand,” Mabel requests with a snicker, “Be careful with this one, now. Don’t move too much until it dries,” 

“Uh-huh,” he hums and brings his hand up close to his face to inspect it. Nearly whispering, he adds: “Whoa. Noen Eubanks _wants_ what I have,” 

Mabel pauses her ministrations to let out a soft laugh, the breeze-through-the-nose kind, then she whips her head up as if a thought has just occurred to her. “Hey,” she starts through a smile and Mark immediately perks up, startled, “Let me give you an eyebrow slit,” 

“ _No,”_ Mark says pointedly, raising his eyebrows at her.

“I’ve told you before! It grows back. It’s just hair,” Mabel coaxes, multitasking as she finishes painting Mark’s pinky finger. 

“What if it _doesn’t_ grow back, though? I’d be eyebrowless,” 

She laughs before replying, struggling to muster a straight face, “If that happens — and it _won’t_ , I’ll come here and draw them on your face every day if I have to,” 

“Nope!” Mark shakes his head, “Still a no,” 

“Fine,” Mabel feigns a pout and Mark chuckles. After a few seconds, she adds: “You’re done,” and taps at Mark’s wrist softly, signaling at his now colored nails.

  
  
  
  


_4_

  
  
  
  


“Hey, can I come over?” Mark says but the reply from the other end doesn’t come fast enough, so he adds: “Sorry, were you asleep?”

“I wasn’t, but,” Mabel cleans her throat through the static, sounding just the slightest bit astonished, “You wanna come over _now?”_

“I’ll be quick, I promise,” he mutters sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head with his free hand, “I just wanna be the first person to wish you a happy birthday,” 

“Okay,” Mabel laughs, “Come over, then,”

And just like that she hangs up. Mark smiles to himself and walks out the door to take the seven-minute stroll from his dorm to Mabel’s.

Once he’s there, though, it’s a little awkward. From the doorway he eyes Mabel, already clad in her pajamas and blinking drearily, and simply tuts: “Happy Birthday,” with his voice squeaking at the very end of the sentence.

“Thank you,” Mabel laughs, absentmindedly rubbing her neck and moves to let him inside the room, “Though it’s not over midnight yet,” 

Mark shakes his head with a half-embarrassed smile, “Sorry for coming so late. You were just about to sleep, weren’t you?” 

“Doesn’t matter,” Mabel insists with a headshake of her own, “Thank you, really,” 

“Yeah,” Mark starts, pacing without really moving far. Ultimately, he sighs: “Sorry. The gift I got you couldn’t be delivered on time and I didn’t want to do nothing for you actual day of birth, so I thought I should _at least_ be the first to wish you a happy birthday. Then, I thought it’d be lame to show up empty-handed so I wanted to bring you something, like flowers, but turns out I didn’t know if you had a favorite kind but I didn’t want to ask you either because it would seem suspicious so—” 

“Mark, it’s fine,” Mabel puts an end to his rambling with a laugh, “You’re my best friend. You should know it doesn’t really matter to me, whether you get me a gift or not,” 

“But that’s exactly why!” Mark reasons, eyebrows shooting up in distress, “You’re my best friend. I want you to know that I love you,”

“I know that already,” she says, quietly.

“No,” Mark widens his eyes, standing very still for a moment, “I _love_ you. Not as in, like, let’s get married or anything. But I love you, as in, you make me feel like myself. You make me feel like I could do anything. I love being your friend. Being with you makes me so happy it’s ridiculous — it’s the best part of my day. I want to make sure you feel like that, too. I want to make you feel as happy as you make me,” 

Only after he’s done talking, feeling winded like a weight has just been lifted from his chest, does Mark realize Mabel is tearing up. Her eyes shine with the room’s lighting for a second then she hides her face on the crook of her arm, sighing.

“Oh, don’t. You’re gonna make me cry too,” Mark says, half-laughing, but it’s useless because he can feel his eyes burning already. Sniffling, he hums: “Come here,” 

Mabel looks up and wipes a stray tear from her cheek before letting herself be pulled into the hug. Mark pats the back of her head comfortingly and swings them both around a little, until they manage to catch their breaths. “I already do, you know,” says Mabel, “I feel just like you,” 

“Okay,” Mark chuckles, “Didn’t mean to make you cry,” 

Mabel laughs softly and they part from the embrace, just staring at each other happily until a sharp sound startles them both.

“Oh,” whistles Mark, pulling out his phone and beaming proudly at the lit-up screen, “There it is, it’s past midnight. Happy birthday!”

**Author's Note:**

> title from rex orange county's best friend (im sure you know that already)
> 
> special thanks to sofia for being supportive!
> 
> mabi, i know i tell you this every other day, but i love you, i really do. i started writing this just to humour you but i ended up getting way more into it than i probably should, so, here, take two-thousand words. happy birthday, even though im late.
> 
> truth is, mark lee would be lucky to know you like we do. 
> 
> <3


End file.
